A hand-held device that can tell people whether they should head to their doctors for further cholesterol testing is being launched in Greater Vancouver this week.

The PreVu checks for cholesterol buildup on the skin: High levels of cholesterol are risk factors for heart disease.

But the test doesn't give an actual measurement of cholesterol as blood tests do, nor does it distinguish between "good" and "bad" cholesterol.

Rather, based on cholesterol buildup, it tells people whether their risk of heart disease is normal, borderline or elevated, and urges those in the last two categories to see their doctors for standard blood cholesterol testing. The PreVu testing, which takes a few minutes and costs $20, is being offered at London Drugs stores in Greater Vancouver and Winnipeg as a test pilot project.

Pharmacists administer the tests, which involve sticking a piece of foam on the palm of a hand, then placing drops of a cholesterol binding agent into three holes.

Drops from a second liquid will trigger a change in colour, depending on how much cholesterol is in the skin. A light meter is then used to read the colour.

While the company that owns and distributes the technology for the device sees it as a way of raising awareness about the risk of coronary artery disease, a doctor at St. Paul's Hospital's Healthy Heart Program has reservations.

Dr. Jiri Frohlich said he hopes people don't think they can substitute skin testing for blood cholesterol tests and that they don't confuse the results.

"The correlation between skin and blood cholesterol is not perfect. Skin testing may bring a lot of confusion. In summary, I do not like the idea." said Frohlich, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of B.C.

Frohlich is also a co-author of a B.C. study, published in The American Journal of Cardiology in 2002, that found an association between skin cholesterol and heart disease risks like calcium plaque in the arteries and inflammation. (The skin test has not been proven to predict future risks of heart attacks and strokes.)

But the lead author of that study, who chairs the PreVu medical advisory board for an unspecified stipend, said there's no point making comparisons between the tests because they're different.

"The goal is not to replace blood measurements of cholesterol or to avoid the need for a health care professional to undertake a cardiovascular risk assessment," said Dr. John Mancini, director of UBC's Cardiovascular Imaging Research Care Laboratory.

"The goal is to heighten awareness of cardiovascular risk. I think those concerns (of Frohlich's) stem from a reflexive assumption that this test correlates with serum cholesterol. It doesn't and that is stated up front."

Mancini, who wrote a full-page foreword on the device for company literature being sent to doctors, also noted that people buy thermometers or take their blood pressure in pharmacies and said skin cholesterol testing is all part of the same process of being proactive about health.

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